Exhibit to tell stories of World War II
Beginning soon at the Fayette County Historical Society as well as at other venues around the county, the story of World War II will be told in exhibit form. Here is a story of the Second World War that I first encountered years ago:
This time of year in 1943 Alfred Wilson of Fairchance departed for the Army. By September 1944, he was writing his family from France, where he was a medical corpsman with the 26th Infantry Division.
“I am thinking of you,” he wrote his father, Jesse. “Dad, I always pray for you and the kiddies …. Hope you feel the spirit as I pray.”
Alfred was a devoted son and a Christian, a man of faith.
The road to a foxhole in France had not been easy for Alfred and for his family. The 10 Wilson siblings lost their mother around 1935. The Great Depression was challenging. Alfred, quitting school to help support the family, headed off to the Civilian Conservation Corps. Dad Jesse landed a job with a government construction crew.
After the start of the war, both got coal mining jobs.
Alfred was restless and a little embarrassed during the early years of the war. Two brothers, Lloyd and Harold, were in the service, as were many if not most of the able-bodied young men of the community.
Then his draft notice came. According to a younger brother, Alfred welcomed the chance to serve but didn’t want to have anything to do with the essence of war — killing the enemy. He much preferred being a medical corpsman; he much preferred saving lives to taking them.
Alfred left for the service on a cold February morning. While waiting for the trolley to Uniontown, Jesse pulled his son aside. Serve your country faithfully, but don’t take unnecessary risks, he told Alfred.
Twenty-five when he was drafted, Alfred Wilson was a big, strong, strapping guy who was losing his hair. “Baldy” Wilson his barrack-mates called him. Still he out-soldiered most of the men in the outfit. On 25-mile long marches he pushed far out in front of the pack. He rested while waiting for the others to catch up.
“He was a quiet guy. He minded his own business,” an Army buddy and fellow-corpsman, George Trabucco, a native of Providence, Rhode Island, told me. “But he was always trying to help someone. He was always the strong” one.
From Fort Jackson, S.C., Alfred wrote his dad, “I am a new man.” Still, he was looking forward to the day he would return to Fairchance, to “be as we were before … But before that day comes I might be seeing a whole lot of other things. But don’t worry. I will get along good ….”
On the morning of Nov. 8, 1944, near Bezange le Petit, France, the 26th sprang into action against the German army. Wilson and Trabucco took up positions in a forward area, ready to treat casualties.
Trabucco recalled the dead and dying; torsos without arms and legs; bloody corpses everyone; the cries for help. One casualty was medical corpsman Wilson, who despite his own wounds, continued to minister to the needs of others. He was credited with saving the lives of ten American soldiers. Several times he refused evacuation. Eventually he was carried, unconscious, to an aid station where he died.
At 10 in the morning, a few days before Thanksgiving 1944, a messenger set off from Dunway’s Pharmacy in Fairchance bearing a telegram for the Wilson family. One of Alfred’s sisters took the telegram, and tearing it open, read, “The Secretary of War desires me to express his deep regret ….”
In June 1945, Jesse accepted Alfred’s Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest honor, in a ceremony at the Allegheny County Airport in West Mifflin. A newspaper photo captured the moment.
It shows Jesse, a short, somber man, shaking hands with an Army brigadier general. Flanking the father are five of his surviving children — Albert’s brothers and sisters. It is as profound a tableau of sadness and mourning and pride as you are likely to see.
Jesse liked to remember that Alfred died saving lives. He would tell those who inquired that while Alfred was a hero, “the price was too high.”
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books — Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation and Our People. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.